Monday, 17 November 2014

Shelveset Comparer Updated

Shelveset Extension is a visual studio extension that I first published at the start of this year. The extension provides a functionality that is otherwise missing in both Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server that is to compare the contents of two shelvesets. I felt that need for it as our team used shelvesets to pass work around and tracking what has changed since the time a shelveset was taken was not always obvious.

There extension has proved popular I have been trying to keep up with comments and feedback on it. This update was due for some time. The view of the extension in team explorer has changed a bit to show options for typing in two users. This allows for comparing shelvesets between two users. However, unlike the first release of the extension, there is still one list to display all users. To separate out shelvesets of two users, an “Owner” column has been added. The column headers are made clickable as well and will sort the rows based on the clicked column.

Another feature added is the Options panel, allowing users to select whether they want to view the extension as a Team Explorer button or not. Another option is to hide the second user.

The options are there to allow users to customise the view as per their needs.

Apart from the new functionality, several fixes and performance improvements have been made

Going forward, there is going to be another release by the end of this year, where I will be adding feature to search on a shelveset name. There will be further optimisation in the performance when comparing the contents of two shelvesets.